From outside in to inside out

Whilst already awake, I awoke again, to a thought.

I talk to much. And I am tired of listening to myself.

So I had a little chat with my neuroses and in an effort to talk less we decided to take a break from blogging for a while, or not from blogging as such because we’ll be hanging out here, but from talking so much. Because the less I talk the more I listen and the more I listen the more I understand (and the less I annoy those around me).

So thankyou to everybody who has ever visited here and especially to those who have returned to punish themselves more than once, - goodbye for now and goodbye incessant chatter (and hello perhaps enigmatic but ever so slightly scary smile . . .)

peter

Solitude and Loneliness

I drove home yesterday saying these two words to myself, thinking about them. They mean nothing if you say them quickly, you have to draw the words out as you speak stretching the vowels out like an endless Sunday afternoon.

At first they seemed to mean the same thing - being alone, and they do, physically but the difference is emotional. In solitude are happy to be alone, if you are not, then loneliness creeps in. Having lived on my own for 35 years I have been both. It didn’t matter where I was - I have been lonely amongst friends at a crowded dinner table, the conversation whirling around me like a hurricane with me at it’s still centre insulated from from it all. I have also found a peaceful sense of solitude in the centre of a city, just sitting watching the crowds mill around me. The same in the countryside, where I lived. On a quiet evening I would often take a bottle or two of beer and drive out to a spot at the edge of the hills at dusk. From there I could look out over the Lothian countryside and beyond to the Firth of Forth. As the darkness crept in and the lights came on I would sit, sometimes in solitude, sometimes in loneliness but always at peace with the world around me.

Those days are long gone now. The world turns ever changing and I change with it. The difference at least for me, from those days is of course an emotional one - love. Since I fell in love and we got married the loneliness has gone. I can be anywhere in the world, in a crowded airport, or on an isolated empty beach and there will always be someone else with me, there is a connection between us that is independent of physical space. It breaks occasionally when we fall out with each other and then that aching emptiness that is loneliness for me seeps back but that is rare and part of being in love, reminding me that love is something you do as well as what you feel.

Solitude. Loneliness. Peaceful, beautiful words that connect with what is deep within me.

Shopping

Sunday 11am

I like the city. I like it's anonymity. Like a lot of dentists I spend all day talking to people, but underneath there lurks an awkward shyness. I am quite happy with my own company which at work is useful because in between the "hello" and "goodbye" bit the person in front of you cannot talk back past the mouthful of instruments and numbness. And if you wish to be alone there is no better place than the city. You have everything you need all around you but nobody expects you to speak to them. It does have a down side as well - my loneliest times have been in cities, having all those people around just makes the feeling of isolation much worse.

Supermarkets wherever they are are just like a part of the city. You can do all of your shopping, you can read every label and poke and prod things as much as you like and not have to interact with anybody, not even the checkout girl if you do not want to.

But now that Nicola has broken her ankle I am doing more of the shopping. And I have to shop where she shops. And being a country girl she likes to shop the old fashioned way, the way it should be, in real shops. Which here means the farmers market. I'll be buying real food from real people, the ones that actually grow the stuff. It is a good feeling. I might even talk to them as well . . . .




(When I got the farmers market had moved inside for the Winter and I could not get a good photo. So thanks to Nicola for this one.)

Growth

Friday 8.37

Nicola and I watched a documentary about the Rolling Stones last night and very enjoyable it was. I always feel a sort of wistfulness when watching good musicians. I would like to play like they do, with that relaxed freedom that only comes with years of experience. But of course I am not a musician and no matter how much or long I play I will never be one. And yet, if I think about it perhaps I already am. Over the years my playing has changed from poor attempts to copy existing songs, to an easy experimentation with sounds and rhythm, creating small riffs on the fly that come more from my mood at the time than anything else. Nobody else would understand or see what I am doing, blinded as they are by having to judge me by accepted standards. There I fail miserably - I still cannot play a song all the way through, and I am quite happy playing off tune as on - it is the sounds that I am hearing and the emotions it evokes or reflects, like poetry without words going straight to my emotional centre. In my own way I have taken that tiny morsel of musical talent that I posses just as far as Mick Jagger or Ronnie Wood has with their much greater abilities.

It is human nature to compare of course, but I blame television for our shortsightedness, our easy acceptance of secondhand standards taken from ever more sensationalist soap operas and news programmes.

Sometimes it is good to step outside of convention, find a quiet space within, and look at things as they really are.

Trees

Sunday 7.33am

Sitting on our little veranda here at home I look out upon trees as far as the eye can see. I have always been drawn to trees, I do not know why and I am certainly not the only one that feels this way but there is just something . . .

Like the first movement in the salute to the sun that I do every morning the trees have their roots solidly grounded in the earth, and from here stretch up tall reaching to the sky. When the wind blows they do not oppose it but roll with it in a seemingly random swirling motion that brings them back to the centre once again to continue as before. I find this movement both the sight and sound of it very relaxing to watch, to hear, to feel even, for it seem to echo somehow within my own centre. As far as I know the trees are just doing their own tree thing and do not know I exist but when I am close to them I feel surrounded by . . . . possibilities.


LIfe is never dull when there are possibilities.

Everything Changes

Sunday 10.00am

There has just been an election here and whilst America is moving forward, New Zealand seems determined to put blinkers on and go backwards . . . .

I am not good with change, but change is inevitable. I think the trick is to be in balance with everything around you.

A fully grown tree is a beautiful thing and will have seen many things in its lifetime. It gets there of course by quietly bending with the wind and then springing back, all the time continuing in its purpose.

Balance and Vision. Two qualities I need to work on.